Blair Collection > History of the Celtic language

244 HISTORY OF THE
of our own, in facilitating the intercourse of any one nation
with all others, and in completing the moral topography of
the globe.'*
" But whatever may be the opinions formed of these ancient
tribes, — whether the Irish and the Scots Highlanders are to
be denominated Cynesian, Iberian, or ancient Celtic ; and
the Welsh, Cornish, and Armorican are to be distinguished as
Cymri or Cymraic Gauls ; and the inhabitants of Beam and
the Lower Pyrenees, who speak the Basque, are to be asso-
* As an illustration of the necessity of attention to the
languages spoken, as far as this is practicable, I may notice a
degree of discordance between the assertions of two authors,
which this attention is alone likely to remove. In referring
to the progress of emigration westward, — ' There can be little
doubt,' observes Dr Murray, ' that it proceeded in this order ;
first, the Celta;, by the way of the Euxine, and along the
Danube into Gaul ; next, the Cymri in the rear of them, and
originally part of them, though changed in point of language
by long separation. At length the Cymri occupied Gaul and
the adjoining countries ; but they \yere soon followed by the
Teutonic nations, whom they for a time resisted ably, and
even invaded in their territories beyond the Danube. The
Cymraig Gauls carried their arms along the Danube into
Illyricum and Dalmatia ; they took possession of the Alps,
and colonized the whole north of Italy.' — Vol. II. pp. 40, 41.
Dr Pritchard, on the other hand, says, — ' It is remarkable
that it is with the Irish dialect of the Celtic that the barbarous
portion of the Latin coincides. The Celtic people, therefore,
who inhabited Italy in early times, were akin to the Irish
Celts, and not to the Britons or Celtic Gauls,' — Vol. II.
p. 130. At the same time, it may be observed, that when Dr
ftlurray speaks of the Irish having left the continent, he, as
already quoted, says, ' a few tribes only excepted.''